In recent decades, the importance of language in various subjects has gained more attention in research, however mainly in linguistic research. When it comes to studying the language as a tool for learning and communicating history, the research field is still fairly unexplored.

For history as a scientific discipline and for history as an educational subject, the language is central in several aspects, as an object and as a tool. The language is what you actually study in the form of source material and the tools you use to decode, interpret and describe.

The subject-specific language consists largely of concepts for the specific methodological aspects, concepts of specific epochs and different theoretical concepts for interpretation and analysis. In addition, there are a number of terms that are typical for the historical time you study. In order to analyze and understand the historical context, you must also master these time-related concepts.

In this article I investigate how a group of 9-grade pupils use subject-specific language in the form of the subject- specific concepts of change and continuity when describing historical development in the national test in history.

The study shows that the pupils use the concepts, but with different functions. The concepts structure to a certain extent the student's answers, but they rarely have an explanatory or contextualizing function. Some pupils present their answers to show that they use the prescribed concepts. They do not use the concept in order to describe or explain the historical context.